Aug 24, 2010

In my house we speak Hebrew, Portuguese and English. We live in Brazil (portuguese language country). My little baby Hannah (only 3 months) can develop speech and language comprehension usually in any language?

Teaching your child a foreign language

Primed for Learning:Your newborn has a better chance of becoming fluent in a second language than many highly educated adults.

"Between birth and age 8, your child's brain is uniquely hard-wired to absorb languages and to learn to pronounce words with a native accent," says Stacy DeBroff, mother of two and author ofThe Mom Book: 4,278 of Mom Central's Tips – for Moms From Moms(Free Press 2002). "Children learn languages very differently from adults, with studies finding that children even store a second language in a different area of the brain." DeBroff, a former Harvard lawyer who also runs Mom Central, Inc. and thewww.momcentral.comWeb site, understands the benefits of children learning foreign languages on a neurological level as well as a social one.

DeBroff says it is never too early to start teaching children a foreign language. When most parents are concerned only with comprehension of English, they fail to understand just how incredibly children's brains function. "The earlier children start learning a second language, the better, even as early as 1 year old," she says. "Many teachers and linguists recommend starting the language learning process as soon as possible, even before children become verbal in their first language. Even though children are not speaking at that point, they are actively absorbing and processing language."